


in a sweet unrest

by lowriseflare, threeguesses



Series: You are always new [3]
Category: When Calls the Heart (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-11
Updated: 2016-03-11
Packaged: 2018-05-26 04:09:39
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,443
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6223258
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lowriseflare/pseuds/lowriseflare, https://archiveofourown.org/users/threeguesses/pseuds/threeguesses
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The fourth night of their marriage, Elizabeth doesn’t bother to put on her nightdress.</p>
            </blockquote>





	in a sweet unrest

**Author's Note:**

> Title is Keats, Bright Star.

The fourth night of their marriage, Elizabeth doesn’t bother to put on her nightdress.

Jack doesn’t notice until morning. When the cock crows at half-past five, he forces himself awake in the grey dawn, ready to don his red serge and ride into town to relieve the acting constable. The two of them only snatched four days for their brief honeymoon, a short school holiday for Elizabeth and an junior Mountie in from Camp Fullerton to replace Jack. Jack can’t say he’s looking forward to returning.

But: this morning, Elizabeth isn’t wearing a nightdress.

She’s donned one every other night, usually sometime in the deep blue twilight after they’ve finishing lying together, fetching it off the back of the chair to steal away to the privy or rescuing it from the floor where Jack has carelessly pitched it during their rush to undress. By dawn, she’s always prim and proper in high-necked lace and cotton, inviolate. But on this particular morning, Jack rolls over and is confronted by her bare back.

Suddenly he’s wide awake. Elizabeth undressed in daylight is a new miracle, and not one he’s had the pleasure of seeing before. In the first pink dawn her skin seems to glow. Whenever Jack thought of her like this before they were married—and he did, he thought about her, even though it was a terrible sin—he somehow failed to account for her _body_ entirely, hidden under all those layers of fabric. He’s since realized what an oversight that was.

He shifts closer to her on the feather mattress. He’s woken up erect every morning since their wedding, but this is the first time he’s imagined actually _doing_ something about it, sliding an arm around her and pulling her onto her back and—well. He blushes, then feels foolish at his own embarrassment. After all, he’s her husband, is he not? As if to prove it to himself, Jack reaches out to trace the delicate line of her backbone.

Elizabeth stirs at the contact, one lazy hand coming up to push her hair from her face. Jack watches as she realizes her own nakedness like Eve in the garden, her whole body going tense for a moment then relaxing again before she glances over her shoulder to find him staring. Jack smiles sheepishly. He expects her to be embarrassed but instead she smiles too, a faintly amused expression playing across her fine, sleepy features.

“I must have been awfully tired,” she announces, and rolls right over to face him. Jack swallows an actual sound of surprise.

“Must have been,” he agrees after a breath, forcing his voice to stay even. He reaches over and pushes the thick fall of her hair over her shoulder, giving himself an uninterrupted view of her breasts. Elizabeth lets him, even going so far as to roll her shoulders back a little, the whole of her body gone sinuous and coiled. Lord, Jack didn’t account for this at _all_ before they married, the heavy round curves of her, her milk-pale skin. She looks so much different without her corset. She looks so much different in daylight.

“Jack.” She laughs as he draws the quilt down toward the truly improbable curve of her hip. “This is a little unfair, don’t you think?” She nods at his pyjamas, which Jack has been donning every night without fail in a fit of his own modesty.

“Very unfair,” he agrees, but now he has the quilt down far enough to see into the dark valley between her legs, and her hair is a different colour than he thought it was, lighter and closer to the hair on her head, and—He drops the quilt again in a hurry, covering her.

Elizabeth is smirking openly at him now. “Don’t you have work, constable?” she asks, and God, why didn’t Jack notice her voice sounded like that before they were married, low and rich with promise and completely, wonderfully inappropriate for a schoolteacher. Everything about her is inappropriate for a schoolteacher, now that he’s thinking it, too knowing, too full of mischief, too round and curved and—

“All right.” Jack swings both legs out of bed and gets to his feet, trying to ignore his tented pants. “I—Do you need the bathtub, or can I—”

Elizabeth waves him off. “I’ll make do with the washbasin.”

She’s a slow riser, Jack has learned these past few days, reluctant to leave the comfort of the featherbed until it’s well past full daylight. He can imagine what she might have been like in a different life back in Hamilton—a woman of society and leisure, sleeping half the morning away while a gaggle of servants waited to change the linens the moment she finally awoke. He glances around the kitchen as he soaps himself up in the bathtub, reminding himself again that she’s happy here.

And of course, Jack thinks as he emerges from behind the screen to find her pulling her chemise over her head, face freshly washed and her hair still mussed from the pillows, the opportunity to watch her get dressed in the morning is not without its charms.

“Do me up?” she asks when she sees him, pulling a dress in robin’s egg blue from the depths of the wardrobe. Then, off what Jack assumes is his blank, vaguely dumb expression: “My stays, constable.”

Oh. “Oh,” Jack says, dropping his suspenders on the armchair. “Of course.”

Elizabeth scoops her hair off the back of her neck with two hands as he does it, her skin smelling of violets and sleep. She’s got a beauty mark on the crook of her shoulder, no bigger than a pinprick. Jack thinks he would very much like to touch it with his tongue.

“Thank you,” she murmurs when he’s finished. Jack clears his throat and busies himself with his bootlaces.

School starts promptly at half-past six, so Jack tacks up the horse and boosts Elizabeth into the saddle, swinging himself up to sit behind her. He’ll drop her at the church before heading into town proper himself. She could walk the distance herself, he knows, fine weather and a well-trod path, but for some reason this morning Jack is loathe to let her out of his sight.

He’s apparently not alone: “I’ll miss you,” Elizabeth says when he helps her dismount. The glowing dawn has her painted all in Easter pastels, pink skin and blue dress and tiny pearled buttons, her burnished hair caught up with a comb. She looks almost unbearably chaste, like a Botticelli Madonna. Jack clasps her hands and tries to forget what’s under her dress.

“I’ll miss you too,” he promises, meaning it so keenly it’s almost absurd. Any passerby could be forgiven for thinking he was a sailor departing for months on the high seas instead of a constable heading off to patrol a sleepy prairie town for a few hours while his bride teaches school not a mile away.

Elizabeth smiles. “Good,” she says, which sounds so odd and proprietary that it makes Jack shiver. Then, when he makes to remount, “Aren’t you going to kiss me goodbye, constable?”

Jack pauses. On the one hand, they’re outdoors in full view. On the other, they’re married now and there isn’t anyone about yet. So yes, he supposes a kiss isn’t all that improper; he cups her smooth, soft cheek and bends down. Elizabeth tastes like pepsodent and like breakfast and like his wife, familiar now. He opens his mouth, just for a moment, and she sighs.

Jack takes a step closer, unable to help himself, curling his other hand around her waist in naked possession. Already he’s imagining what he’ll do to her tonight once darkness has fallen, the pleading sounds she makes when he puts his—

That’s when Jack hears the giggle.

Elizabeth hears it, too. They break apart in a hurry and find themselves face to face with a pair of pint-sized girls in gingham, lunch pails swinging from their tiny hands. Jack feels himself flush. Elizabeth, he is faintly scandalize to notice, does not colour even the slightest.

“It’s bad manners to spy, girls,” she says calmly, all tart, no-nonsense schoolteacher. “Get along inside now.”

The girls scurry off like rabbits. Once they're gone Elizabeth turns to face him, her lips twisting in a wry, curly smile. “Back to work, I suppose.”

“I suppose.” Jack tips his hat in her direction and nods seriously, still blushing. “Mrs. Thornton,” he says, and heads off toward town.

 

 

Four days away didn’t feel like much this morning, but judging by the stack of paperwork waiting on Jack’s desk at the jail it was just about long enough. It takes him the better part of an hour to read through the report left by the acting constable detailing all the happenings in Hope Valley while he himself has been otherwise engaged: a small fire started by a couple of careless prospectors, a dispute between three drunken millworkers down at the saloon. Jack sorts through the pages methodically, noting down which incidents seem to have resolved themselves and which he ought to follow up on. Rip lies on the floor in the doorway, sulking mightily.

“Now stop that, old buddy,” Jack scolds him. “I know you had a good time with Abigail and the children.” Rip huffs a put-upon sigh in return.

After the paperwork Jack picks himself up and does his usual rounds about town, first the cafe where Abigail gives him a biscuit and a warm, slightly-knowing smile and Clara gives him a pot of tea and a giggle. Jack stares fixedly at his placemat, trying not to blush on the job. Next is the saloon, where he gets more details from the barkeep about the brawl, including an estimate of the property damage, and conducts a quick round of interviews with the off-shifters bellied up to the bar. He’s walking away when one of them cracks a joke, something obscene about new brides and loosening. It takes everything he has, but Jack keep walking.

Outside, he punches one of the saloon’s wooden posts so hard he damn near breaks his fool hand.

He’s heard taunts like that before, of course, men’s rough talk in bars and saloons all across the Prairies, even Tom when he gets in a certain mood. It’s not that Jack’s prudish, per se—he’s a grown man, he’s a member of the Royal Northwest Mounted Police. The problem is that he _understands_ those jokes a long sight better now. He knows exactly what they meant, what part of Elizabeth they were referring to—God help him, exactly what _phenomenon_ they were referring to, can feel it like a phantom caress on his body—and it’s both deeply enraging and also, shamefully, a bit thrilling.

Jack doesn’t know what that says about him, that he’s become the kind of man who can be thrilled by a dirty joke. The sanctity of marriage suddenly feels a lot less sanctified.

He heads out to the church next, even though strictly there’s no real reason to; he’s tired of this day already, of walking around with a sea of knowing looks in his wake. Elizabeth’s smile, when he skulks through the door, is worth a thousand years of teasing.

“Say hello to Constable Thornton, children,” she tells the class, schooling her face into teacher-like neutrality. They’re working on penmanship, the blackboard filled with Elizabeth’s beautifully formed letters, upper and lowercase both. Jack can see she’s written her new name up in the right hand corner, _Mrs. Thornton_. It gives him an odd sort of charge.

She sets the children up with a sentence to copy out, brown foxes and lazy dogs, and makes her way to the back of the classroom. “Official business?” she asks, the barest hint of a tease in her voice. Before Jack can answer she notices his hand, which is bruised and a bit swollen from its run-in with the post. “What happened?” she asks, her blue eyes gone wide.

Jack shakes his head. It feels embarrassing now, un-Mountielike, that he lost his temper at crude bar room humor, that he’s found himself in the blackest of moods for no reason at all. That a part of his brain has been jangled loose by the mere fact that she didn't wear her nightdress last night—jangled loose by _marriage_ itself, even, leaving behind thoughts of one thing and one thing only. “Just a little accident,” Jack assures her. “It’s fine.”

“Are you sure?” Elizabeth frowns, taking his hand and turning it over to inspect it, running the tip of one finger along each of his. “Does that hurt?” she murmurs, pressing gently at his palm with both thumbs.

Jack swallows. He can smell her, faint and familiar. He doesn't remember the neck of her dress being quite so low. And she’s still touching him, the feeling of her smooth, delicate fingers surprisingly intimate, and before Jack can do one single thing about it he can feel himself—

well. He excuses himself from the presence of innocent children in a hurry, that’s for sure.

Jack’s mood does not improve the rest of the day. Rip is in a true sulk, refusing to eat or even go outside to do his business, squatting in the corner of the jail to exact some quiet brand of canine revenge. Jack is forced to clean up after him twice before going to the mercantile for a half pound of steak as a peace offering. Then there’s a fight over at the mill, two boys barely old enough to be out of Elizabeth’s classroom blackening each other’s eyes over some childish slight. It takes Jack the better part of five minutes to pull them apart, getting himself whumped in the ribs in the process. He’s so frustrated he almost locks the pair of them up overnight. He’s embarrassed to realize that his reasons for not doing so have less to do with Christian forgiveness than the fact that a lockup would require him to sleep at the jail. And that’s un-Mountielike too, surely, shirking his duties so that he and Elizabeth can—well. In any case, Jack is ashamed of himself.

But. He’s also just the slightest, _smallest_ bit annoyed, because wouldn’t he be managing better if she’d been clothed this morning when they awoke? If she hadn’t insisted on a goodbye kiss, if she’d worn a higher-necked dress, if she’d been less beautiful in daylight? Jack feels he isn’t fully at fault here.

He drags himself through his afternoon rounds, letting Rip out one more time in case he’s thinking about getting any ideas before writing up his end of day report in the Constable’s log. He makes sure he’s extra thorough in his notes, needing to prove something to himself, then nearly trips right over the dog in his hurry to lock up for the night.

“Sorry, old buddy,” he mutters, shooing Rip back inside and giving him a guilty scratch behind his long, mournful-looking ears. Rip fixes him with an expression that suggests Jack will pay for this come morning.

 _Morning_ , Jack realizes, uttering an oath under his breath. Morning, as in tomorrow, which is too long to leave the dog locked up by himself, and which would have occurred to Jack days ago if he hadn’t been otherwise distracted. Good Lord, is there no limit to this day’s annoyances?

“All right, then,” Jack says with a sigh, nudging Rip right back outside again. “I suppose you’re coming with me.”

How do people _do_ this all day? he wonders as they ride back to the homestead, Rip whining pitifully from inside the saddlebag. Jack knows plenty of married couples. His parents were married. Is there some kind of trick? Could something be wrong with him? It feels unholy, to be so consumed by thoughts of home while he’s supposed to be performing the duties entrusted to him. To be so consumed by...lust.

He finds Elizabeth in the kitchen, wearing an apron over her school dress and more flour down her front than seems to have made it into the bowl. “You’re early!” she says, which doesn’t seem possible. “I thought I ought to get a head start on supper. I hope you like pot pie.”

Frankly, Jack cannot think of anything he has ever cared about less. “I love pot pie,” he says, then tosses his hat on the table and kisses her as hard as he can.

Elizabeth makes a soft, shocked sound against his mouth. Jack takes it as permission to haul her against his body, hands at her hips and in her hair. It’s not enough, though, not nearly enough—dear God, he wants to _consume_ her. She’s kissing him back now, all wet eager mouth and soft sighs, and how is he supposed to work, how is supposed to do anything when she sounds like this, when she tastes this, when she _looks_ like this, flushed and pliable and pleased.

“You’re covered in flour now,” she murmurs when they pause for breath.

“I don’t _care_ ,” Jack says, embarrassing himself with the depth of feeling. “I have been—Elizabeth, I swear, I’ve been thinking about you _all day_ and—”

She kisses him then, slanting her mouth over his, clutching at his face with two hands. Jack finds himself still speaking, confessing helplessly. “I couldn’t think of anything else,” he says. “Not anything, just this, all day—” And now he’s lifting her skirts too, practically yanking at them, and Elizabeth is helping, holding them up herself. Jack doesn’t think he will ever get over the sight of her voluntarily baring herself below the waist, not even if he lives to be one hundred years old.

“Elizabeth,” he groans, resting his head against her shoulder and running both hands up her silky thighs. “This isn’t a joke, I could barely do my job.”

She only laughs in his ear, as if he hasn’t just admitted to a deep moral failing. “I know,” she says breathlessly, her knees parting under his hands. “I had the children recopying lines all day because I couldn't concentrate on my lesson plan.”

Jack twists his head full around to stare at her. “What?”

Elizabeth smiles. “I said ‘I know, Jack, I couldn't concentrate either.’”

“I—Elizabeth.” He gapes at her for a moment. That particular possibility hadn't occurred to him, not once all day long. Of course he knows that she feels—that she feels _pleasure_ of a sort when they lie together. But the idea of her thinking about it when they’re apart, her _imagining_ it, is just—just— “ _Really_?”

“Yes,” Elizabeth says, making a face at him. “Really.”

“What did you think about?” he blurts, before he can stop himself.

“Jack!” Elizabeth laughs, and he’s about to apologize—what a question, really, what on earth is he thinking—but then she tilts her head to the side. “Do you truly want to know?”

“Yes,” Jack says immediately, then blushes at his own eagerness. “That is—what I mean to say is—if want to tell me. Yes.”

Elizabeth smiles again, but it's a different kind of smile now, slow and knowing. “I thought about this,” she says, kissing his jawline, “and this—” another kiss, this one on his neck below his collar, the hot swipe of her tongue— “and _this_.” At that she presses herself against him chest to thigh, _seeking_. Jack groans out loud.

“Elizabeth,” he says, fumbling at her skirts until they’re completely up over her hips, and Lord, it’s still _daylight_ out, it’s not even dinner hour. They’ve always confined themselves to nightfall before, to bedtime; Jack has the vague idea that any earlier would be sinful, or at the very least morally suspect. And they're in the _kitchen_. But it’s no use—he fists his hands in the fabric of Elizabeth’s drawers and pulls.

“My boots,” she says breathlessly, and Jack goes down on his knees to unlace them, not even bothering with her stockings. Elizabeth is still holding her own skirts out of the way, her back against the cupboards. When Jack glances up she’s staring down at him, wide-eyed.

“Is this…” He can’t quite finish the sentence. Her thighs are soft and white and covered in pale downy hair, each and every individual strand picked out by the sunlight.

Elizabeth swallows, shifting her skirts in her arms with a soft rustle. “Yes,” she says. Her voice is so quiet it barely carries the two feet of distance between them. “Please.”

He pulls down her drawers with shaking hands, helping her step out one foot at time. Then at last he’s looking at her again, full daylight and the sweet private v of her thighs, her soft thatch of reddish hair. If Jack is honest with himself, this is what he’s been thinking of all day long, specifically this, Elizabeth-between-her-legs. He hasn't been able to get it out of his mind since this morning.

He presses his face against her lower belly, head bowed like he’s praying at an altar. She smells different down here, sharper, more animal. He likes it. He kisses her stomach once, chastely, then nudges her legs further apart and puts his mouth on the soft, delicate skin on the inside of her thigh.

“Oh,” Elizabeth breathes, a shudder trembling through her. Jack is so hard it actually hurts. Any moment now he's going to stand up and take her to bed properly, get the rest of her clothes off and afford her the respect she deserves. But first he kisses her again, higher this time, right where the line of hair starts.

Elizabeth gasps out loud.

“Is that—can I—?” _Do you like that_ , he wants to ask her, but the question seems obscene. When he curls his fingers around her thigh, wanting her even more open—for what purpose Jack can’t exactly say, only that he wants it, that he's been wanting it for hours now—he can feel that she's gone slippery between her legs.

“Yes, except—I can’t _see_ you,” Elizabeth says, voice muffled. She’s dropped the hem of her dress, but it’s not until Jack looks up that he realizes she’s working the buttons down the side of it. He groans, pressing his mouth against the crook of her thigh. His lips come away slick. And Lord, that’s _definitely_ obscene, that can’t be sanitary, they should stop right now.

Jack bends his face back toward her thigh and licks.

“ _Jack!_ ” Elizabeth has her dress unbuttoned now, he hears the whoosh of muslin and lace as she pulls it over her head. Then there’s a thunk and he realizes she’s dropped her corset too, so much faster at undressing herself than he is. When he looks up again he sees her hesitating with her petticoat slip, the hem bunched up in both of her fists. Her cheeks are very, very pink.

“I—” Jack stops speaking as their eyes meet. Her whole face is asking the question. “You might as well,” he laughs finally, helpless, and Elizabeth puts a hand over her eyes but she’s laughing too, and then she actually _does_ it, a quick wiggle and swoosh of fabric and dear Lord, they are in the _kitchen_.

“I hope no one comes calling,” Elizabeth says breathlessly, reaching down to touch his head. Jack can’t help but notice she doesn’t sound especially worried.

“Well, I’ll be fine,” he tells her, gesturing down at his full constable’s uniform. “You’re the one who’s going to be in trouble.”

Elizabeth hums, reaching out with one foot and tapping the toe of his boot. She still has her black stockings on, and something about that is even more distracting than her nakedness. “What are you doing down there, constable?” she asks. Her hand is still on his head, resting there like a benediction.

What, indeed. Jack has no idea why he’s remained on his knees for so long, only that he doesn’t want to stand up yet. Unable to answer, he bends his head to her thigh again, sucking lightly at the salty skin. She smells so sharp and so good. “All _day_ , Elizabeth,” he repeats, and she makes a sound that is not unlike a whimper.

Jack reaches up to touch her then, rubbing lightly through the hair until she seems to open to him somehow, his fingertips gone all-the-way-slick. Elizabeth’s fist tightens in his hair. “Good?” he asks—looking for the place she seemed to like so much on the second night of their marriage, looking up at her for guidance. Elizabeth nods.

 _But I can’t see_ you, Jack thinks with some frustration. Even undressed, even in daylight, she’s still so much a mystery to him. He wants to see every last part. He uses his fingers to spread her a bit, he can’t help himself, the need to investigate her everywhere like a physical urge. In the late-afternoon sun coming in through the window, she’s pink and she’s wet and she’s _complicated_. Jack has never seen anything like her before.

“Jack,” Elizabeth says. The hand that’s not in his hair is gripping the edge of the cupboards, like she’s holding herself upright that way. “Please.”

“Please what?” Jack begs into her skin, and he isn’t teasing her, not in the least. He’ll do whatever she wants him to, anything. He just needs her to tell him what that is. “Elizabeth.”

“Please—” Elizabeth trails off, shaking her head helplessly. “Please—”

Jack can’t take it anymore, her voice sounds so thready and desperate. His hands are occupied with holding her open so he puts his mouth on her instead, needing to do _something_ , needing to help her _somehow_. Elizabeth makes a noise so high-pitched it’s a wonder Rip doesn’t hear it outside and come running.

“Is that—” Jack pulls away. Already his lips are covered with her, she’s so wet and slippery and foreign. When he licks them she tastes like salt and the sea, thick on his tongue. “Elizabeth, can I kiss you there, is that all right?”

“ _Yes_ ,” she gasps, the hand in his hair tightening almost to the point of pain. Jack doesn’t need to be told twice. He kisses her again, a deeper kiss, like the kind he would give her mouth. Elizabeth’s breathing has gone near hysterical. _All right, sweetheart_ , Jack thinks, his fingers opening her up wider still. He wonders idly if he should be more concerned about hygiene, but it’s difficult to care when she seems to like it so much. He kisses a new pink patch of skin, then another, investigating the texture of her, slick and slippery and vellum-soft. It’s hard to get purchase on her under all the wet, though, so finally Jack gives into his baser instincts and licks.

“Oh my God, _Jack_ ,” Elizabeth screeches, the first and only time he’s ever heard her take the Lord’s name in vain. Jack suspects he should be more scandalized, but in truth he just wants to make her say it again.

He’s mouthing at her in earnest now, looking for the opening where he enters her every night. When he finds it, licking softly with his tongue, Elizabeth’s thighs start shaking. But she’s still so folded in on herself down herself, pressed together and private; Jack insinuates his body between her legs and nudges gently. “Wider, Elizabeth,” he tells her quietly, and is only a little surprised when she drapes her knee right over his shoulder.

Well, that opens her up nicely.

Jack takes advantage of the extra room, rubbing with two fingers alongside his tongue, the beginnings of his beard marking up the delicate skin of her and inner thighs. He wants her on him everywhere, all over—her taste, her smell. It’s not like anything they’ve done together, not like anything Jack’s ever done in his life, and he feels half-mad with it. He wants to possess her utterly. He feels utterly possessed himself. He reaches up behind her and cups her backside, squeezing harder than he necessarily means to. Elizabeth keens.

“I’m sorry,” he gasps. He’s sweating inside his uniform, his shirt sticking wetly to his back. “Did that—?”

“No,” Elizabeth tells him. “No, it’s—” She’s squirming against his mouth and his fingers now, restless. Her heel in its stocking is sliding down his back. Jack wonders if she's getting uncomfortable, if he should pick her up and bring her to bed and have her properly, but when he pulls back to try and ask her she grips the back of his neck and—oh, sweet Jesus, sweet Mary mother of God—pushes him back down where he was.

“ _Please_ ,” she hisses. Her voice is more violent than begging.

Jack is starting to have his suspicions about what she’s asking for now, about what she needs. But it’s happened so few times he can't be sure it’s happened at all—the night he touched her until she arched her back, the night he pressed his bare thigh against her while they were kissing. It stands to reason, though, doesn't it? If he can feel ecstasy, perhaps she can too.

Jack rests his head against her thigh for a moment, forcing himself to breathe. He’s half afraid he's going to spend himself in his pants right here. The idea that she could actually—that he could _make_ her— He’s almost out of his mind with lust. Is this common knowledge? Jack wonders. Dear God, why didn’t somebody _tell_ him?

“All right,” he tells Elizabeth. “Easy now, I’ve got you.” She liked the licking so he does that again, more purposeful now, covering as much of her skin as he can in great, dragging swaths. Elizabeth is whimpering almost continually, writhing against him. Jack boosts her up a touch higher with the hand on her backside, trying in vain to hold her in place. Finally he finds the spot that made her gasp the other night, a hard nub like a bead trapped under her skin, and fixes his mouth against it while he squeezes her bottom rhythmically. Elizabeth starts to chant his name like a litany, _Jackjackjackjack_ , and it only takes a minute more of that before she’s shuddering against him, her stockinged leg sliding off his shoulder to the floor with a thud.

“Jack.” Elizabeth slides down the cupboards to collapse bonelessly into his lap. “Oh my _heavens_ , Jack.” She’s laughing and shaking her curly head in delight, her voice just the slightest bit horse. Jack has never felt more brilliant in his entire life.

“Good?” he asks, unable to stop himself. He wants to hear her say it out loud.

“ _Yes_.” Elizabeth tilts her face up and kisses him, open-mouthed—she’ll be able to _taste_ herself, Jack realizes, and feels himself twitch in response. “Take me to bed, Constable,” she mumbles into his mouth.

Jack doesn't have to be asked twice. He scoops her off the floor and strides toward their bedroom, tossing her onto the mattress with enough force that everything bounces appealingly, the blankets letting out a quiet _whoof_. Elizabeth laughs in surprise. She pushes herself up on her elbows to consider him, one knee pulled up lazily like it isn't suppertime on a weekday, like this isn't enormously illicit. She looks like an ancient goddess in repose.

“Take your clothes off,” she tells him imperiously, rubbing the sole of one foot along her opposite ankle. Jack huffs out a bashful laugh.

He does it, though, nearly falling over in his hurry, jacket and boots and suspenders and pants in a jumbled, messy pile on the floor. The taste of her is all in his mouth, thick and heavy. It’s not strictly pleasant—nor strictly _un_ pleasant, either—but it’s making him so hard he’s standing up again his own belly.

“Now come here,” Elizabeth orders, pulling up both knees and _parting_ her own—Dear God, parting so wide Jack can actually see pink, and—

Well. He doesn’t quite make it inside her before he spends himself.

Elizabeth hums and cranes her neck as he loses his composure in a wet splatter against her inner thigh. “So that’s what happens,” she says with some interest, like she’s been wondering.

He laughs, resting his sweaty forehead on her shoulder. “Yes, Elizabeth, that’s what happens.” It felt like it came from somewhere deep this time, down in the depths of his toes, his whole body turning inside out. Probably he should be more humiliated, but mostly he just feels satisfied.

“Hm.” Elizabeth twines herself around him like a vine, sighing in his ear and running her fingers down the damp groove of his back. Her face, when he glances at it, looks so well pleased it makes him blush. “And what you did earlier,” she says after a moment, sounding suddenly hesitant. “To me, I mean. Was that—did you—?”

“I liked it very much,” Jack blurts, before realizing that might not even have been what she was asking.

But Elizabeth laughs. “Good,” she announces, smiling a pleased cat’s smile and stretching languidly underneath him. Then, as he watches, she drags one finger through the mess on her thigh and—Jack will never forget the sight of this for as long as he lives— _licks it off_.

“ _Elizabeth_!” Now he truly is scandalized, though that's admittedly not his only reaction. The stir between his legs feels almost uncomfortable for how soon it is.

Elizabeth only shrugs, mischievous. “You did,” she says. “It only felt fair.”

It only felt fair. Jack twists a corkscrew of her hair around his finger, feeling almost absurdly fond. Something is happening to him these past few days, an intensity of emotion he can't quite identify. He loved her before they were married, of course. But somehow this feels like more than that.

He wants to tell her—is considering what he’d possibly say—when Elizabeth tenses like an animal that’s heard the crunching of leaves in the forest. “Do you smell—oh _no_!” She springs out of bed in an instant, taking off toward the kitchen at a tear. Jack affords himself one moment to enjoy the view of her backside, then scoops his drawers off the top of the pile on the rug and follows.

 

 

“Well, let’s be honest,” Elizabeth says ten minutes later, the charred remains of the pot pie smoking on the table between them. “I likely would have burned it either way.”

“That’s not true,” Jack says charitably. “It might have been horribly underdone instead.”

“Cheek!” Elizabeth flicks a dishrag at him, bustling off toward the icebox. She’s put her cotton chemise back on but not, Jack couldn’t help but notice, her drawers. “We still have some sliced beef, I think.”

“Sliced beef sound wonderful.” The chemise covers her from neck to mid-calf, ostensibly chaste, but the cotton is so very thin and in the full sunlight… Jack pours himself a glass of water and tells himself he’s admiring the lace detailing. While two years in Hope Valley have seen Elizabeth trade in most of her fussy heiress dresses for hard-wearing shirtwaists and skirts, Jack’s realizing that her concessions to practicality do not extend to undergarments.

“Soda biscuits,” Elizabeth says, setting them in front of him. “Hominy. Iced tea. Oh, I think there’s still some of Abigail’s lemon cake too if you’d like that?” She looks up, pushing her mess of curls out of her face. “Jack.”

“I—yes. Sorry. Sure.” Good lord. He doesn’t think he’s ever seen her move around so much without her corset before, and he’s _certainly_ never seen her banging plates of food up and down not two feet in front of his nose. He sits down at the table in a hurry. His drawers are thin, too.

“Yes to the lemon cake?” Elizabeth asks, the barest hint of a smile in her voice.

“No, er—yes to all of it,” Jack says, flustered, and oh, now the smile is real. It’s so soon after they’ve finished, he doesn't even know how his body is managing this. It’s faintly humiliating.

“Very well,” is all she says.

He’s hungry, he realizes suddenly, and makes quick work of the cobbled-together meal, the same kind of picnic hodgepodge he and Tom used to fix themselves after their father died. Elizabeth watches the whole proceeding, nibbling delicately around the edges of a biscuit and sipping her tea. She makes no move to cover herself up—the opposite, in fact, the lacy strap of her chemise slipping down one elegant shoulder. It's getting on twilight by now, the sky turning blue and the kitchen going shadowy. Jack glances out the window, wondering idly how soon until it's dark enough to suggest turning in for the night.

He blushes into his iced tea, realizing what he’s thinking. He remembers back when they courting, how it could be days or even weeks between kisses. Now here he is imagining taking her back to bed after barely a quarter of an hour. Truthfully, soda biscuits for supper doesn't feel like such a terrible trade.

Elizabeth is watching him from across the table, sharp chin pillowed in one hand. “Something on your mind, constable?”

Well, in for a penny, Jack thinks. “Just that you’re very beautiful,” he says. “And also that it’s a good thing we live out in the middle of nowhere.”

Elizabeth raises an eyebrow, aristocratic. Sometimes Jack is astonished he married her, fancy Elizabeth Thatcher of Hamilton. She is unquestionably the prettiest school teacher in all of the West. “Is my attire somehow inappropriate, constable?” she asks, lifting one shoulder so the strap of her chemise slips still farther.

Jack swallows his bite of biscuit against a suddenly dry mouth. “Depends on your purpose,” he says, trying very hard to keep looking her in the eyes. It would be the height of rudeness to drop his gaze now, when she’s looking him full in the face. Jack is not a rake.

“And what do you imagine my purpose is?” Elizabeth asks. Suddenly he notices she has both elbows on the table, a breach of etiquette in and of itself, but then she _leans_ towards him too, the neckline of her chemise dropping just so, and—

Jack looks. Damn himself, of course he looks. When he whips his eyes back to Elizabeth's face, she’s smiling.

“Was that your purpose?” he asks roughly. He could not stand up now if he tried.

Elizabeth purses her lips daintily. “I’m sure I have no idea what you mean, constable,” she says, reaching for another slice of cold beef. And Lord in heaven, Jack knew she liked to tease before he married her—that she was a flirt, even, coquettish in that half-theatrical way that some girls take it into their heads to be—but it never occurred to him that she had the capacity for _this_ , this darker, more womanly version that is somehow almost...wicked. He was taught his whole life that it was God’s will that man and woman be joined in matrimony. Jack cannot imagine this is what He had in mind.

When they’re finished Elizabeth clears the empty dishes, setting the ruined pie outside for Rip, who sniffs it disdainfully and trots off to pout under the porch. Elizabeth sighs. “Perhaps we should get pigs,” she says mournfully, coming over to where Jack’s still sitting at the table and laying her cool, smooth palm on the back of his neck. “That way, at least someone in this family would eat well.”

“Goats, maybe,” Jack suggests brightly, wrapping an arm around her waist and squeezing. “A goat will eat right through a tin can.”

Elizabeth puts on an exaggerated scowl. “You’re awfully impertinent today,” she says, tugging lightly at his earlobe. This close he’s eye-level with her chest, the swell of her underneath the cotton and the faint shadow where her skin turns that darker, dusky pink. “Maybe I’ll just stop cooking altogether. _Actually_ ,” she continues, trailing one finger along the collar of his undershirt, the edge of her nail scraping lightly over his throat, “maybe I’ll just stop performing all my wifely duties. What would you think about that?”

Jack’s eyes widen. “‘What would I—’” He tightens his arm and yanks her right into his lap, the move so automatic it’s almost involuntary. Elizabeth lets herself be pulled, draping both arms around his neck with a game little laugh that suggests she anticipated, or perhaps even intended, his reaction. Lord, it’s like trying to out-flirt Delilah. Jack is almost too shy to give voice to his next thought.

“I think you’d mind it worse than I would,” he says, staring her straight in the face.

Elizabeth hums. “Well,” she begins, scritching her nails along the back of his neck before—have mercy upon Jack’s soul—dropping her frank gaze to his lap. “I don’t know about worse.”

Jack kisses her then, because she’s sitting there like temptation incarnate, Eve and the apple all at once, and he is at the absolute end of his rope. Elizabeth whimpers against him immediately, hot and eager, and _dear God_ —Jack fists both hands in her hair and drinks in her mouth, sucking at her pointed tongue. He wants to _bite_ her, he swears, he has never felt lust like this before her. He reaches for her breasts, handling her more roughly than he’s let himself in the past, swiping his thumbs over the tips until they stiffen up through the cotton. Elizabeth moans. Jack likes this, that he’s learning how she’s put together, that he’s better able to anticipate her reactions, thorough investigation paying off.

“Take this—” Elizabeth fists her hands in the fabric of his undershirt, rucking it up his back; Jack lets go of her for a moment to lift his arms up. He can smell himself, faintly, a long day’s work and everything that’s happened between them. Elizabeth doesn’t seem to mind. “So modest,” she teases, tossing his shirt onto the floor beside them.

Jack lets out a low grumbling noise, only half-joking. He doesn’t believe modesty is a crime. “I’m from the country,” he reminds her, ducking his face to suck at her neck.

“Oh, I see.” Elizabeth tips her head back to give him better access. She’s seated on him side-saddle, like a grand lady on a horse. “And city folk aren’t as modest as country folk?”

Jack doesn’t answer for a moment. His fingers have found the thin silk ribbon at the lace-up neckline of her chemise, a fiddly little tie that seems to serve form more than function but that, if pulled, will nonetheless bare the entire top half of her body. “City folk are worst of all,” he says quietly, and pulls it. “Everyone knows that.”

Elizabeth glances down at herself with a wry twist of her mouth. “Well, I’m hardly a fair sample,” she says, rolling her shoulders back so the chemise’s bodice parts even further. Jack laughs breathlessly and puts his hands on her again, squeezing and stroking.

“Sin of pride?” he asks, leaning back to survey at her. Jack thinks he would be proud if he was a woman and he looked like her, all curls and pink cheeks and a body that wouldn’t be out of place on the prow of a ship. She’s beautiful and terrifying and very, very full.

But Elizabeth shakes her head. “Sin of lust,” she whispers, and before she even finishes the sentence they’re at each other’s mouths again, both of them nearly feral with it. No, Jack doesn’t think this is what the Good Lord intended marriage to be like at all. He isn’t about to stop now though, not when Elizabeth is pushing herself into his hands and moaning openly into his mouth, her nails at his shoulder like knives. She likes when he rolls the tips of her breasts between his fingers, he discovers, likes it even better when he bends himself nearly in half to suck them. She raises herself up in his lap to help, practically standing in her desperation to keep his mouth on her. Jack tries to help her, sliding his hands under her bottom and lifting.

“Jack,” she gasps, getting to her feet for real. “Do you think we could—” Her hands are still at his shoulders, squeezing rhythmically. At first Jack thinks she’s going to ask to be taken to bed, but instead she steps to the side to stand directly in front of his knees. She inches forward slowly, her legs outside of his now.

“Is this—” she asks, blushing, and if _Elizabeth_ is blushing… Jack swallows. “I mean, can I—?” And before Jack can answer—before he can even truly understand what she's after—she’s bunched up her hem and lowered herself right onto his lap again, one long, smooth leg on either side of his.

“Sweetheart.” Jack groans, thanking God or the Devil he's already spent himself once today. So much for sidesaddle. “You’re—”

“There,” Elizabeth gasps, twining her arms around his neck. “That’s better.”

It is better, that much is undeniable. It is also completely obscene. She’s pressed right up against him, the thin wet cotton of his drawers the only thing in between them. Every time she moves they’re rubbing together, the friction almost too much for Jack to bear. It feels like—Jack wonders if it would even be _possible_ to—

His hips jerk at the thought, and Elizabeth keens. “Ja-ack,” she whines—and she truly is, she’s _whining_ at him, her voice high and wheedling. “Please.” She’s opened up her hips against him even further, and Jack can actually feel her through his drawers now, the soft wet slip of her.

“Let’s—” He’s too shy to suggest it. “Elizabeth, let’s go lie down,” he gasps, jostling her lightly. It only makes her whine again, and mercy, he is never going to be able to speak to her in public again without hearing that sound. He is never going to be able to speak to her in public again at all.

Elizabeth shakes her head, already reaching down and fumbling for the tie of his drawers. Jack sends up a quick prayer of thanks that one of them has nerve, then immediately sends up a second asking for forgiveness for the first. She barely gotten his drawers out of the way before she pauses, though, looking up at his helplessly. “Lord, Jack, I don't even know how to—” Her whole face has gone beautifully, shyly pink.  
  
So, it falls to him, then. Jack clears his throat and slides his arm between their bodies, his knuckles brushing against the slippery seam of her as he takes himself in hand. Heaven help him, but she is _wet_. He’s starting to realize what that means, that it’s a product of them together and not just her everyday state of being. It’s paralyzingly arousing.

It takes him a moment to line them up properly, a different angle and Elizabeth’s thighs gone tense as a racehorse waiting for the starting gun. Jack breathes a sigh of relief once he’s notched himself inside her, looking up at her expectant face. “Sweetheart,” he says gently. “You need to be the one to…” he trails off.

Elizabeth looks at him blankly.

“Sit,” he blurts.

“Oh!” She giggles a bit, nervous. Jack pets up her arms. “Right, of course.”

She takes her time, sinking down onto him inch by slow, torturous inch, peering between them with the look of determined concentration he’s seen her get when she’s poring over her science books or attempting Abigail’s recipe for scones. Jack focuses on breathing through his nose. It seems like ages before he’s all the way in, the weight of her thighs and the hot grip of her body. It occurs to him to wonder if he’s been doing it too fast the other times.

“It’s different,” she says suddenly, head snapping up, eyes wide like she’s Marie Curie discovering radium. “It feels—Jack. It feels _different_.”

“Good different?” Jack asks worriedly. It feels different to him too, certainly, a bit unnerving, how sitting this way makes him rather passive in the whole endeavor. He isn’t quite sure it’s appropriate.

Elizabeth nods, biting her lip. “Yes. It’s—yes.” She shifts on him just a hair, barely moving, but it’s so slick and good that Jack shoves up into her without thinking, nearly bucking her right off his lap. Elizabeth hisses. “ _Jack_!”

This may only be their fifth act of marital relations, but Jack knows enough to recognize her tone is _not_ a tone of passion. “I’m sorry,” he gasps, forcing himself to sit still. “Did that hurt?” It could be the position, he thinks wildly, or maybe just the fact of him. He doesn’t think he’s ever been inside her for such a long stretch of time before, has never lasted. It might be too much.

Elizabeth nods, still wincing. Her face is flushed and sweaty. “A little.”

Jack breathes. She feels like a too-small set of clothing, now that he’s pausing to notice it, perilously snug, as if any wrong move could fray her seams. Maybe it’s a blessing their other encounters have been so short. “I’ll stay still, then,” he tells her, pushing his hands through her hair to cup her damp neck. He doesn’t remember her perspiring so much the other times, either. “You be the one to...move.”

Elizabeth’s eyes go so wide he almost takes it right back. But then she nods, and then she actually _does_ it, she moves, and Jack’s concentrating too hard on sitting still to say anything at all.

She doesn’t do much at first. There’s a lot of wiggling, of lifting herself slightly off and then slightly back on, her hands braced so firmly on his shoulders it feels like she’s holding him down in the chair. Jack takes deep breaths and focuses on his posture, on arithmetic, on anything but the fact that Elizabeth Thatcher is astride him, looking right at his face as she takes him inside her body. Already he’s starting to have second thoughts about this position, because surely this is unnatural, isn’t it? Jack’s certainly never seen animals do it this way.

“Touch me,” Elizabeth says suddenly.

“Wha—” Jack was so busy trying to distract himself from what’s happening that for a moment he’d forgotten he could, his fingertips curled around the seat of the chair like he’s trying to keep himself from falling off it. “Where?”

Elizabeth shoots him the kind of withering look he hasn’t seen from her since their very first days in Hope Valley. “ _Anywhere_ , Jack, I just—”

Jack takes the direction in a hurry, palming her waist and her backside and her rib cage, reaching up to cup her full, heavy breasts. He kisses her for good measure, worrying her plush bottom lip lightly between his teeth. It’s a better distraction than trying to remember his multiplication tables, that’s for certain, though perhaps a sight less effective.

Elizabeth seems to think so too, Jack can tell by the way her body relaxes after moment, rocking on him with a little more certainty, leaning her damp forehead against his. “All right,” she says quietly, almost as if she's talking to herself. Then again, a moment later, “All right. _Jack_.”

And _that_ , Jack thinks, suddenly more alert than he thought possible—that is a voice of passion indeed.

“Yes?” he asks, palming down her back eagerly. “Elizabeth, do you think you could—” He stops speaking entirely. He was actually about to ask her, out loud, if she thinks she could reach ecstasy like this. Some questions should never be uttered, sanctity of marriage or no.

“Think I could what?” she asks distractedly, still rocking on him. “Oh, Jack, really, that feels very—” She laughs a little, like she’s pleased, and rocks again. Then, perhaps noticing he’s blushing so hard you could cook an egg on his face, “Think I could _what_ , Jack?”

If he doesn’t answer she’ll probably take it upon herself to extract it from him. Jack takes a deep breath. “Think you could...enjoy it fully. Like earlier.” Oh, but this was a mistake. He should have never married, he should have been a bachelor with Rip until the day he died. He does not have the temperament to talk to any woman about this subject, let alone Elizabeth, who is so beautiful she could have wrecked the city of Troy without trying.

“Oh.” She doesn’t even look embarrassed, just faintly thoughtful. “Perhaps?” She rocks on him again, like an experiment, and seeing her try to use his body for her own pleasure—Jack is going to die right here.

“Can I help you?” he hears himself ask dumbly, as if she’s carrying an armload of heavy groceries from the mercantile. “Elizabeth, sweetheart, what can I do?”

“I don’t—” Elizabeth wriggles again. She doesn’t answer for a moment, head bent in concentration, shifting her hips this way and that—and that, and that one more time, until Jack begins to suspect that she’s onto something here, that perhaps his further assistance isn’t even necessary.

“Elizabeth,” he says, feeling strangely left out.

“Yes, yes—” She still isn’t looking at him, head down and her lion’s mane of hair curling wildly over her face. She’s squirming faster now—truly, Jack cannot take much more of this, but he thinks he’ll hate himself forever if he spends himself before she’s taken her pleasure. Most of all he doesn’t like this uneasy feeling of not doing anything, the idea of her working herself toward a conclusion while he sits idly by. It feels like he’s failing her as a husband.

“Elizabeth,” he says again.

“I need—” She cuts herself off, looking frustrated now, and just as she says it Jack gets it into his head to reach down in between them, searching with his thumb until he finds that same magic place as earlier, that hard button underneath her skin.

And that—well. That seems to work.

“Ja-ack,” she whines, eyes flying to his face at last. Jack will sit still in this chair until he dies if she keeps looking at him like that. “Yes.” She swallows, glancing down between them again. “Oh, Jack, look.”

Jack looks. And yes, now he sees why her head has been bent this whole time, how when she lifts her chemise you can see straight down between their bodies, can see the hair and where he’s parting her, how she’s swollen and stretched and— He whips his eyes back to Elizabeth’s face. “I can’t.”

Elizabeth laughs. “Can’t?” she asks, rolling her hips languidly. “Rub, Jack,” she commands, and oh yes, he does seem to have stopped. He starts back up again double-time, and Elizabeth’s head drops back. “Like that.”

She’s moving on him faster now, up and down, so quickly parts of her are starting to bounce. Oh, but this is definitely a sin, Jack thinks uselessly, there is no way on God’s green earth they are supposed to be engaging in marital relations this way. But in this exact moment, he’d truly rather go to Hell than stop her. Her back is arching and she’s starting to make noise now, to moan. Jack thought only woman of ill repute did that but that must be wrong because she’s so beautiful, and how could anything this lovely be a sin?

“Jack,” Elizabeth says after another moment, her voice full of an urgent kind of wonder, like she’s pulling him to the window to look at a shooting star. “Jack, I think—” She stops abruptly, angling her hips and bearing down on him. “ _Jack,"_ she gasps and Jack wonders if this is what marriage is, at the core of it, the privilege of hearing her say his name like that for the rest of his breathing days. “ _Now_.”

Jack can feel it, the way she’s suddenly clenching on him so much harder, and as soon as he realizes _that_ it’s happening for Jack too, wave after wave of wicked pleasure as he empties himself inside her on a long, undignified groan. He closes his eyes and holds on as tight as he possibly can.

When it’s finished Elizabeth wraps her arms around her neck, draping almost her whole self over his shoulder like an exhausted child. Outside the sky has turned an inky prairie black. “To answer your question,” she says after a long moment, both of them breathing in the dark, quiet kitchen. “I can enjoy it like that.”

“I can, too,” Jack says, and Elizabeth laughs.

**Author's Note:**

> Turns out, it is REALLY hard to get 1912 frontier Canadians to fuck both a) realistically and b) well.


End file.
